COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH FOR THE INTERNATIONAL ALUMINA INDUSTRY

For more than a decade the Australian alumina industry has collaborated together to fund a range of research projects which have delivered tangible benefits to the industry. The vehicle used to coordinate these efforts has been the Australian Mineral Industries Research Association, now AMIRA International. Recently this effort with the alumina companies has been “re-energised” with the organisation of an Alumina Technology Roadmap.

In recent years the projects have increasingly involved alumina producers based outside of Australia such that the efforts now are truly international.

The research projects have, in the main, focussed on fundamental studies that deliver high level outcomes amenable to implementation of tangible benefits by the company-based technology groups. Substantial areas of study have been in precipitation, its interaction with calcination and product quality, solid/liquid separation, physicochemical properties of synthetic and Bayer liquors, fluid dynamics, equipment engineering, comminution and classification.

An important adjunct of the projects has been the development of world-standard public research groups active in Bayer process technologies and maintaining them at a critical level. These groups in turn have produced a range of graduate students well versed in alumina refining who are sought after as industry employees. Australia is now recognised as having the world’s leading public sector and private company alumina research groups. Many of the private sector groups are used as a corporate facility to service that company’s refineries worldwide.

The paper will describe the background to the collaborative research efforts, engagement of the alumina companies, discuss the range of projects undertaken and, in particular, highlight the successes, and look to what will happen in the future with such research.